Cloud and its effectiveness on govts in focus

Beirut, April 6, 2014

Microsoft Lebanon hosted a workshop on cloud technology and its effectiveness on governments and the public sector recently in Bierut recently.

The National Cloud Summit incorporated a series of lectures on the benefits of National Cloud in governmental departments as well as public and private sectors in Lebanon. It brought together key decision makers from the Lebanese government.

Cloud computing is increasingly becoming the top solution for refining ICT infrastructure for governments, reducing costs and creating new innovations, said a statement.

Global governmental spending on cloud services is expected to rise from $22 billion in 2010 to nearly $73 billion in 2015, representing an annual growth rate of 27.6 per cent, it said.

Hoda Younan, Microsoft Lebanon country manager, said: “We pride ourselves in providing top notch services at the governmental level. Microsoft has invested heavily in cloud computing for over a decade, and we currently run some of the largest cloud services in the region.

“With 15 years of experience in cloud computing, Microsoft has hosted some of the world’s largest cloud services with reliability and security, and we aim at implementing that in Lebanon by offering the largest cloud capacity at the lowest possible cost.”

A key feature of cloud is its potential to increase the efficiency of infrastructure usage, as well as fundamental cost reduction. These features will help governments boost their development process and improve data quality through centralization and uniformity.

Hany Morcos, cloud technologies director, Microsoft MEA, said: “Governments across the region started to use cloud services strategically to improve government service delivery by eliminating redundancy, increasing agility and providing IT services at a cheaper cost.”

“Microsoft works with many governments in the formation and implementation of a cloud computing environment at a national level. We focus not only on cloud adoption but also to leverage the existing infrastructure and we work with governments on appropriate policies in each country covering legal, contractual, and data sovereignty aspects of cloud computing.” he said.

Migrating to the could will enable governments to become more effective and globally competitive by having a service delivery that provides end-to-end solutions with common user experiences, and offers the ability to grow dynamically to fit into the ever changing governmental needs.

It will also reduce costs, which in turn increases hardware utilisation and staff efficiency. With private and public clouds, data and applications can be available on-premises, permitting agencies to configure to the combination most compatible with their needs. - TradeArabia News Service